News and events from 2016

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ASB Reduced By 39%

Our StreetWise services contributed in Raunds towards a reduction in youth anti-social behaviour of 39% and no reports of young people being involved in criminal damage for the last three months of the period we have been working in Raunds. More than 27 young people achieved positive outcomes including a reduction of alcohol use, young people benefited from positive adult role models and were informally educated about healthy & unhealthy Relationships. Between June 2015 and September 2015 our StreetWise services contributed in Higham Ferres to a reduction of 20% in youth anti-social behaviour and a decrease in criminal damage with no reports being noted by the police. Between October 2015 and December 2015 our StreetWise services contributed towards a reduction of youth anti-social behaviour of 52% when compared to 2014 figures. Over 50 young people between the ages of 8 to 17 engaged with our StreetWise team. Young People achieved positive outcomes including getting their voice heard at the Town Council concerning the local skate park and associated graffiti, taking pride in their local area and breaking barriers down with the local communities by undertaking a litter pick and clean-up campaign and were informally educated about drug and alcohol use.

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Awards Ceremony A Hit

On Monday 13th June, Service Six held an awards ceremony at Kettering Conference Centre, to celebrate the success and completion of the three year big lottery funded Youth Starz Project. The Youth Starz Project began at Service Six in July 2013, funded through the Big Lottery, for three years. The project worked within three targeted areas of Northamptonshire in relation to their needs. The aims and targets of the project were to work with young people, to allow them the opportunity to gain transferable life skills, improve their wellbeing and happiness levels, develop young leaders and to participate in community based volunteering activities for the benefit of other community groups. The project successfully over achieved the targets and saw a reduction of anti-social behaviour within the areas, improved school attendance and increased levels of wellbeing. Throughout the past three years, the Youth Starz Project successfully supported 448 individual young people, 23 community projects and saw over 160 young people gain accredited volunteering. The projects and 1:1 support delivered were shaped upon what the young people wanted. Covering issues such as child sexual exploitation, self-harm, drug and alcohol awareness, community safety, budgeting, parenting and many more. The awards ceremony saw 61 young people receive awards such as, best personal journey, most improved young person and young leader of the area. The awards ceremony was attended by young people, parents, professionals and Kettering Mayor Cllr Scott Edwards.

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Great Fund Day For All

Hemmingwell Fund Day-The Safer Stronger Neighbourhood Partnership held a community fun day on the Hemmingwell Estate on 16 July 2016. More than 20 partner agencies (including us) attended, as well as around 1,000 residents, making the day an amazing success. More than 120 questionnaires were completed, which has proved useful in identifying priorities the community would like to see; as a result, partners are coming together to deliver more sport sessions and music sessions for local people over the summer.

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New Project In Milton Keynes

Regional Charity, Service Six, is celebrating winning a major Big Lottery Fund grant of £324,700 to work with disadvantaged children and young people in Milton Keynes.

The three year, ‘Youth Starz,’ project is set to begin in November and will support 350+ youngsters aged 4 to 19 years all of whom will be identified as vulnerable and hard to reach. Based at Service Six’s Coffee Hall Community Centre the project will offer bespoke support programmes for individuals and a range of free activities and support services targeted within the Woughton and MK City areas.

Assistant Chief Executive, Claudia Slabon said, ‘Service Six is over the moon about the grant award but young people within the areas are the real winners. We are really excited about our new project and can only see positive benefits for vulnerable children and communities. This is a real opportunity to develop our existing success and outcomes and make sure that together we are reaching the most disadvantaged young people with the best range and quality of services.’

The grant award follows a successful consultation with over 250 young people residing within the area to identify their needs and interests which has helped to shape the project which will initially focus on free sporting activities, in particular football academies, also arts, crafts and cookery. The venture will include nationally accredited youth volunteering opportunities to cascade support to other disadvantaged groups in the community so participants increase their transferable abilities throughout the project and pass on their energy and learning.

The project will enable young people to increase their life skills and they will be supported to actively run the project and gain other valuable competencies including communication, team work whilst improving their wellbeing. The project aims to reduce anti-social behaviour, increase school attendance and attainment towards raising aspirations and increasing the life chances of children struggling with often complex and chaotic lives.

Service Six has worked in close partnership with Places for People, one of the largest property and leisure management, development and regeneration companies in the UK, to regenerate the Coffee Hall Community Centre since August 2015. This grant award cements the initial successful year of work undertaken within the community. In the last year Service Six has helped 97 people across diverse ages, ethnicity and needs with interventions including Mums and Tots Coffee Mornings, Youth Club, Home Work Club and a Holiday Club. In August, the Service Six team took 30 children for a day trip to Hunstanton, funded by the Milton Keynes Foundation.

Mark Viggars, Neighbourhoods Regeneration Manager at Places for People, said: “Service Six provides a vital service from the Coffee Hall Community Centre, supporting and encouraging young people and their families to broaden their horizons and realise their true potential. It has been a privilege for Places for People to help nurture Service Six in the expansion of its operation, as part of our long-term commitment to the Milton Keynes community. We look forward to helping them deliver many more positive outcomes for young people as a result of this significant new funding.”

A similar Youth Starz project has been successfully delivered in Northamptonshire between 2013 and 2016 with the new MK project set to benefit from learning and good practice already achieved.

Service Six has been serving the region since the mid-1970s and has provided life-saving and life-changing services for hundreds of thousands of young people and, within more recent years, for children, adults and families.

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Awards Ceremony A Hit

A huge thanks to Maziak and all their staff for raising a fantastic £600 for Service Six. The money was raised by staff participating in ‘Wear your Xmas jumper to work day’ and Maziak's Xmas Party Raffle. The money raised in the 2 events was kindly matched by Maziak. The money will go a long way to helping in one of our clubs.

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Lots Of Presents Donated

We had a big delivery from The Faraway Children's Charity on behalf of Pitsford School. The children and their families donated lots of wonderful presents for vulnerable and disadvantage children and young people we are working with. We also received presents from a local vineyard which were left over from their Santa's grotto. This Christmas we will hopefully make many more children & young people smile and feel a little bit of happiness. A huge thank you to everyone who donated . We will take pictures when giving out the presents.

News and events from 2017

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Welcome to Our New CEO

Welcome and congratulations to our new Chief Executive, Claudia Slabon, who’s took up her new duties from the 1st January 2017.

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Donation Received From Rushden Mayor

Today we had the pleasure to received from Tracey Smith, Rushden Mayor the sum of £986.93.

We were delighted that her son has chosen to give the money to Service Six. Tracey's son , who is 13 years old, is being supported by our service and in Tracey's words "He has come a long way and thanks to Service Six for working with my son and helping him to feel listen too" a special Thank you to Pep our Youth Support Practitioner who is working with Tracey's son on a 1 to 1 basis.

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Our Last Session At Raunds Club

We had great fun at Raunds Youth Club last night for our last session. All our regulars showed for a final session. We had lots of fun things to do including play dough, stress balls and cake decorating. The table football was very popular. Young people wrote some very heart felt letters and Thank you cards relating how the youth clubs have helped them and their wellbeing.

Service Six would like all the young people and parents who have supported this initiative over the past year. Thank you also to Raunds County Council for commissioning this Service.

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TARGET Team Joined By Beanfield Primary School

On Thursday 15th June year 6 students from Beanfield Primary in Corby spent the afternoon with our TARGET Team. The young people participated in the high energy interactive workshops and learnt about the dangers of the online world and how to keep themselves safe. The TARGET Team will be continuing to deliver a wide variety of workshops at the school throughout the rest of the year.

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TARGET Champions

Our Target Champions and Team have been hard at work over the past few weeks. They have been learning new skills, developing their knowledge of online protective behaviours and how to support young people from the dangers online. The champions have worked with us to collate information from our consultations, to ensure our helpline and app is shaped to the needs of the young people. They will be looking to work in schools and the community to assist disadvantaged young people who are at risk or have been affected by online grooming, exploitation and trading.

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TARGET Team Working With Northampton School For Boys

The Big Lottery Funded TARGET (Targeting and Reducing Grooming, Exploitation and Trading of Children and Young People online) Project worked in collaboration with Northampton School for Boys to raise awareness and tackle the dangers that young people face online. The school identified young people for the project to work with over a period of 6 weeks and then assisted with the delivery of workshops during Enterprise Week. The students created a video, drama and information session that was delivered to year groups within the school.

Regional Charity, Service Six, is celebrating winning a second major Big Lottery Fund grant in a three month period. BLF have awarded a further £401,432 for Service Six to work with disadvantaged children and young people in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire.

The three year full-time project, ‘Targeting And Reducing Grooming Exploitation & Trading of Children Online,’ (TARGET) is set to begin in April 2017 and will support 900+ youngsters aged 5 to 18 years all of whom will be identified as at risk of or already affected by online sexual exploitation and abuse.

Service Six launched the TARGET project in 2015 after their data indicated a 21% increase in young people presenting with negative online experiences since 2012 and noted a significant gap in bespoke online sexual exploitation intelligence and services. Subsequent project research with 826 young people undertaken between late 2015 and Summer 2016 showed that over half of young people are regularly contacted by strangers online, over a third have received indecent sexual images and over a quarter have sent indecent sexual images. Furthermore, over 20% have been asked to meet with strangers and 8% had agreed. Most shockingly less than 1% of young people had shared any of this information with an adult. Disadvantaged young people were shown to be at the highest risk being 21% less likely to report online sexual exploitation to an adult.

Project beneficiaries will increase their online protective behaviours, improve their wellbeing and increase their transferable knowledge and skills. The project activities will include a youth designed free online App to promote protective behaviours online. ‘Support to Report’ services, youth led educational workshops and an annual conference will be organised to cascade project learning.

Chief Executive, Jane Deamer said, ‘Service Six is absolutely delighted about the grant award and the positive impact for disadvantaged children that the expansion of TARGET will enable. Tackling Online Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (OSEA) is the most critical work I have undertaken in my career so far. OSEA represents the biggest threat to the highest number of children of our time so we cannot ignore the crisis that’s already occurring and must address the dangers of the online world children now live. Working with and for children has never been more important to safeguard the current and further generations.’

TARGET is endorsed by over fifty partner agencies including schools, charities and companies but critically has been supported since 2015 by Northamptonshire Police’s, DS Carole Walton, who said, ‘The protection of children is a priority and I am extremely pleased to be supporting and working on the TARGET project with Service Six. Understanding the true extent of the problem will then ensure effective prevention and protection of children and young people online (and off).’

De Montfort University’s, Dr Lee Hadlington, who is a Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology, Chartered Psychologist and a Founder Member of the Psychology and Technology Research Group, has also significantly supported TARGET since it’s early development by providing guidance on the informal youth led research activities. Dr Hadlington said, ‘This work will play a fundamental role in further understanding how individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds view or experience online crime. At the moment we know very little about this, and if we are to find more effective way of protecting the vulnerable groups in society we really need to engage in research like this.’

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New Grant Received

East Northamptonshire Council (ENC) has allocated grants totalling £95,000 to community & voluntary sector organisations for 2017-20.

Organisations were invited to put in applications for the grants in the various themes and their proposals were considered by a panel of councillors. The decisions on the final awards were made by the council’s Policy and Resources committee in December 2016.

Each application for the three year Community Support Grant (CSG) had to demonstrate how the organisation would tackle local issues under three key themes - Debt Management, Counselling and Support and Community Transport.

The Counselling and Support theme grant has been awarded to Service Six who offer counselling, support and positive activities to the children, young people, families and communities of Northamptonshire. Service Six will use the grant to improve counselling and support services across East Northamptonshire including access to specialist services around mental health issues.

News and events from 2018

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New StreetWise Project

STREETWISE – Wellingborough (Queensway)

We are pleased to announce that Service Six has received funding from Places for People’s Homechoice funding to deliver our Streetwise project in the Queensway area of Wellingborough.

These funds will support weekly outreach/detached and positive activities sessions throughout 2018; currently every Thursday 6pm – 7.30pm and every Saturday 3pm – 4.30pm.

Our Streetwise project reaches out to and engages with the most hard to reach children and young people on the streets and in the community and is participants / needs led, using a solution focused approach. The team will work intensively with targeted groups of children and young people to support them in developing behaviour for learning and tackling issues in areas of their lives which may prompt negative behaviour. We will address those issues impacting negatively on the young people’s behaviour to enable them to consequently demonstrate ‘positive behaviour for learning and achieving’, improve their attitudes and contributions to their families and communities.

Streetwise will include confidence and skill-building activities for children and young people, including other issues which might arise during the engagement with them to develop alternative coping strategies and understanding of their behaviour and its consequences.

Year 10 Kasia and Reece from Wrenn Academy in Wellingborough, organised on Monday 29th January 2018 a fundraising event for the benefit of Service Six.

The evening raised £115.21

Service Six Chief Executive, Claudia Slabon was presented with the money during their school assembly the following day and thanked all the young persons for putting on such a great show

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Billie Flown To India

Billie, one of Service Six Youth Starz Practitioners, has taken a period of extended leave for 6 weeks from the Youth Starz Project. She is a trustee of Salt of the Earth, a charity that supports rural development projects in India and run a multitude of programmes focusing on women’s empowerment, income generation, health, education and environmental preservation. Their aim is and always has been to improve the life of the rural poor so they can lead meaningful and poverty free lives in the villages that they were born in.

Billie arrived in India in late December, she spent two weeks visiting parts of rural India, including Kochi, Kollum and Varkala. She has seen traditional Kerala dancing, traditional fishing boats, ridden in Tutut’s, visited fish markets and has been on a sunset cruise.

Billie has been on a 6 hour train journey to Maduri, where she has seen a famous Hindu temple called Meenakski, visited a flower market and seen the Thirumala nay (Palace). Billie has then flown from Madurai to Chennai where she met the Salt of the Earth Supporters to start the charity tour. On Monday they left Chennai and travelled down the coast to Pondecherry. It is currently Pongal which is like a Hindu Harvest Festival. The festival involves making fires and cooking pots and buying sugar cane. On one of the four days they paint all of the cows! As this is a long period of time to be away, we felt it would be good for the children and young people who access the Youth Starz Project to be given updates of what Billie is up to while away, so she has taken a

pink rubber duck which we named Indie with her and she is sending photos of the different places she visits with Indie. During our Chapter Kids youth club we are doing Indian based arts and crafts, and creating a display of the photos Billie sends.

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Service Six Project Shortlisted

Orbit Housing has nominated Service Six’ Streetwise project in Pineham, Northampton for the Tpas Award for Excellence in Community Action Central Region. Community Action is where activities are initiated and organised by members of a community for that community's own improvement. The Tpas Award for Excellence in Community Action recognises projects and initiatives that have helped to address local needs and facilitate change as well as recognising the commitment and continued activity of local people. Our Streetwise project has been shortlisted and the team is attending the Awards ceremony on 20th April 2018 in Birmingham. Good luck!

Regional Charity, Service Six, is celebrating winning a major Children In Need grant of £94,745 for the Opal Project, supporting Northamptonshire young people who are battling with self-harm. The

The three year Opal Project is set to begin in April 2018 and will support 720+ youngsters aged 10 to 18 years all of whom will be identified as the most disadvantaged young people and primarily those living in Northamptonshire's highest multiple deprivation areas: Northampton; Wellingborough; and Corby.

The project will offer bespoke support interventions for individuals who are using self-harming behaviours as an unhealthy and unsafe coping mechanism to release their accumulated negative emotions and feelings. The support service will include a six weeks Wellbeing Group Work programme and One-to-One support & mentoring package for young people. The venture will also include nationally accredited youth volunteering opportunities to cascade support to other young self-harmers so participants increase their transferable abilities throughout the project and pass on their energy and learning.

Chief Executive, Claudia Slabon said, ‘Service Six is over the moon about the grant award but young people within Northamptonshire are the real winners. We are really excited about the recognition of The Opal Project and can only see positive benefits for vulnerable young people. This is a real opportunity to develop our existing success and outcomes and make sure that together we are reaching the most disadvantaged young people with the best range and quality of services.’

The grant award follows a successful consultation with over 500 young people to identify their needs and gaps in provision. Evidence shows that young people’s self-harming actions aid the management of their anxiety and low self-confidence as a result of their diverse experience of abuse, trauma, inequality and loss.

The Opal Project will enable young people to reduce their self-harming behaviours through identifying alternative healthier ways of coping and of channelling their frustrations and other strong emotions. The project aims to reduce anxiety through understanding what the difficulties are, exploring strategies how to treat and deal with those difficulties to achieve emotionally and physical wellbeing and to develop a strong self-belief.

Chief Executive, Claudia Slabon said: ‘Increasing young people’s self-confidence by helping them to become competent in having control over their situation, making smart decisions and taking responsibility for their choices we enable young people to achieve being emotionally well and having essential skills to live happier and healthier lives.’

The Opal Project was founded in 2004 by two young people from Magdalen School in Brackley and became a countywide service provision in 2010 through Service Six.

Service Six have received recognition from leading housing provider Orbit for their Streetwise project in Pineham after being awarded the Brian Griffiths Community Group of the Year Award 2018.

The award is made in the memory of the late Brian Griffiths, a former Orbit board member and Chartered Institute of Housing President, who dedicated his life to helping others and is given to a group or organisation that has developed a project that has encouraged their community to actively socialise and engage with each other, meet a gap in local services and make a real difference to the lives of Orbit customers.

The Streetwise project provides a free two-hour activity session every week for children and young people in Pineham. Lack of play and green space meant young people were congregating on streets leading to anti-social behaviour including criminal damage to cars and property.

Streetwise sessions have helped to reduce anti-social behaviour, low level youth crime and has provided meaningful and positive activities such as sports and crafts to help increase wellbeing amongst participants.

Service Six Youth Support Practitioner Gemma Muscutt explained, “The project has helped to build community spirit by bringing people together in a new estate when previously they did not integrate. This has encouraged young people to make friends, interact with each other and break down social barriers.”

“Since the Streetwise project started in June 2017 it has helped to reduce anti-social behaviour, making a real difference to people’s lives”, added Service Six CEO Claudia Slabon. “The young people now play together outside of the sessions rather than cause any issues in the neighbourhood”, she added.

The award was made to Service Six at a ceremony held at the Andaz Hotel in London where award winners enjoyed afternoon tea.

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National #EndHunger UK Campaign

Service Six is taking part in the ‘End Hunger Week’ 15th – 19th October 2018. This encompasses a national EndHungerUK conference and also coincide with some relevant activity in Parliament including the presentation of two key bills, the submission of the Universal Credit petition, and should also support some stronger campaigning and storytelling, as well as events by local groups.

The campaign has floated the idea with Channel 4 News and have had a very positive response.

As part of this initiative Service Six has joined Food Poverty Network, organised by the Northamptonshire Community Foundation to raise awareness and to support families in Food Poverty.